Cohoes leads the way on home price growth

Colleague Tim O’Brien, writing for a recent Sunday real estate section, dug into data from the Greater Capital Association of Realtors and found that Cohoes — yes, Cohoes — had the greatest percentage home price appreciation in the decade before 2010.

The median sales price in Cohoes more than doubled, from $72,000 to $146,000. Mechanicville, meanwhile, saw median home values rise 91.5 percent, from $94,000 to $180,0000.

Towns like Niskayuna, Bethlehem and Guilderland had smaller percentage increases — although homes in those towns sell for considerably more.

That’s actually a pretty good chart…
1) choose the town you like
2) find a house that you want to buy that’s priced with the number on the right
3) offer the number from the left (because that’s probably what’s worth)

Cohoes is one of the few places in the area where you can have a waterfront residence. Despite miles of riverfront there is little used for residential purposes.
I flew into Albany on Monday and because of the weather we flew well north of Albany over Rensselaer cty and crossed the Hudson north of Clifton Park. I was on the west side of the plane and could really see how much waterfront there is. Sad that it’s mainly warehouse/commercial or highway.

If you have a median house price of less than 100K, it is much easier to have double digit growth than higher priced areas. In the last several years all houses under $100K were being scooped up, because it is not realistic to build a house for $100k. There has been a fair amount of condo building in Cohoes, and it also has nice residential areas outside of the main city area that feeds to colonie schools. Plus, the cohoes falls are spectacular, and as much as people lament about Cohoes, waterfront and view are king, and will always appreciate faster than any temporary hot neighborhood. Many of the Harmony Mills places at the falls are rentals, therefore, wouldn’t count in this analysis.

@etc: Frustrating, isn’t it? All those condos going up, which is good, but then they’re all at least $100K overpriced… I’m surprised they’ve sold as many as they have. I’d love to own a condo in Cohoes (and I’m sure you would too), but not at those prices.

The data does match my personal experience. My grandmother passed away in 1998; her house, which I believe she had lived in since it was built in the ’50s, sold for $85K. It has since been sold thrice, the last time being in 2007 for $173K, an increase of 103.5%. (All data from Zillow.)

What your measure shows is that houses that were sold were in general higher priced. It doesn’t reflect the value appreciation or depreciation of any individual home.

In fact, it might indicate the opposite insofar as access to credit is significantly lower for those with lower income thus the demand for lower cost housing is reduced. Your median housing transaction index would be higher because there would be a smaller number of lower priced housing sales, AND the value of those lower priced houses diminishes because of the demand decrease.

I’ll lay it out step by step for you:
1) Banks are tightening consumer credit.
2) Less creditworthy individuals are disproportionately impacted because although the prime rate has fallen, subprime rates and credit has increased.
3) This means wealthier people are able to buy and sell homes more easily than those that are less creditworthy
4) Wealthier people buy higher priced homes
5) More higher priced homes are bought and sold than lower priced homes
6) Median sales prices rise
7) This has NOTHING to do with whether any individual property’s value rises or falls